Richard Liu is coming to take Wang Xing's business

Author | Wang Xiaojun

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

The takeaway market, which has been stable for many years, has a new disruptor.

On February 11, JD.com officially launched the recruitment of "quality dine-in restaurant merchants" for its takeaway service. It announced that merchants who join before May 1, 2025, will be exempt from commission for the entire year.

Currently, JD.com is only recruiting "quality dine-in restaurants." From the merchants that have already joined, there are chain dining brands such as Haidilao and Burger King; there are also previously joined chain coffee and tea brands like Luckin Coffee, Kudi, and Mixue Ice City.

JD.com’s entry into the takeaway market relies on its long-term capabilities in instant delivery, focusing on quality takeaway. This indicates that it has its own advantages and a differentiated competitive strategy, seemingly poised to carve out a niche in an already relatively stable landscape and share the current players' cake.

This market also has considerable barriers to entry; many major companies, including Douyin, have previously attempted to enter, and there may be further achievements in the future. In the long term, there is still considerable uncertainty about whether JD.com can remain in the takeaway market.

JD.com’s entry will inevitably force existing players in the industry to make changes to respond to new competition. The takeaway industry is set to experience a new wave of upheaval.

Entry

JD.com’s foray into the takeaway business is not a spur-of-the-moment decision.

As early as June 2022, then JD Retail CEO Xin Lijun stated in an interview that JD.com was considering entering the takeaway business, which would be launched on the JD Daojia App, with pilot cities like Zhengzhou being selected. However, due to factors such as the pandemic, the takeaway project was not officially launched at that time.

In the past two years, e-commerce platforms have increasingly felt the difficulty of growth. JD.com is also unwilling to remain content with just maintaining its base in 3C digital products and wants more expansion. Last year, JD.com focused on the apparel sector in e-commerce, aiming to establish the mindset of "buying clothes on JD.com" among users. Growth in this area will take longer to see results.

The instant retail sector, which JD.com has long bet on, is also expected to show new growth.

Research data indicates that the market size of instant retail (especially takeaway) is expected to exceed 2 trillion yuan by 2030, with a growth rate far exceeding that of traditional e-commerce. Through takeaway services, JD.com can reach more offline consumption scenarios, breaking the traffic bottleneck of traditional e-commerce.

Takeaway is another major move JD.com has made in the instant retail field.

Currently, JD.com is already a mature player in the instant retail sector. JD.com has gradually covered supermarkets, pharmacies, fresh produce, and other areas from "JD Daojia" to "JD Miao Song," continuously expanding the scope of instant delivery.

Takeaway is the largest and most penetrative sub-market in instant retail. By filling this segment, JD.com’s local life service chain becomes more complete, forming a closed loop of "full categories + instant delivery."

Additionally, as a high-frequency, essential consumption scenario, takeaway is expected to enhance user activity and stickiness on the JD.com app.

Currently, the JD.com app shows that the homepage still features the e-commerce interface, with the takeaway service embedded in the "Miao Song" channel, linking with instant retail services such as coffee, milk tea, fresh produce, and pharmaceuticals. This synergy drives the sales of low-frequency products (such as 3C digital products and daily necessities) through high-frequency takeaway orders, achieving traffic extension and ecological collaboration Currently, JD's food delivery business belongs to Dada Group, an instant delivery and local retail platform under JD Group. Since last year, JD has taken several steps to fully incorporate Dada under its umbrella. On January 25, JD Group issued a preliminary non-binding proposal to Dada, intending to acquire all circulating common shares of Dada, excluding the shares already held by JD, through a privatization transaction.

This layout is also JD's preparation to fully enter the food delivery market.

Currently, Dada has over 1.2 million active couriers, which is sufficient to support JD in making significant strides in the food delivery industry. JD's food delivery service has promoted the slogan "fastest delivery in 9 minutes," which is expected to further stir the market.

However, JD still needs to solve the issue of attracting enough merchants to join. Currently, although JD offers a commission-free incentive for early-stage merchants, there are requirements for merchant entry, limited to "quality dine-in restaurants."

From the JD APP, it can be seen that the merchants currently on board are mostly chain restaurant brands, many of which are coffee and tea merchants that had already joined earlier. There are few restaurant merchants, and only standardized brands like Haidilao and Burger King have their names marked with "brand" on the food delivery interface.

Many merchants currently express that the order volume from JD is still relatively low. This means that JD needs to use subsidies and other forms to encourage users to start using JD for food delivery, which is a long cultivation process.

Disruption

China's food delivery market originated around 2014, initially with many players. However, in recent years, the food delivery market has long been dominated by Meituan and Ele.me.

There was even a saying in the market: when ordering food delivery, one should alternate between Meituan and Ele.me, and never stick to just one platform, as this would lead the platform to believe that the user is indecisive and needs to be courted, resulting in relatively fair prices; otherwise, they would suffer from "big data price discrimination," paying more for the same items.

As a result, many workers adhere to this principle, switching back and forth between the two platforms. Although Meituan occupies a larger market share, Ele.me has loyal users from 88VIP, making it difficult for Meituan to completely eat into Ele.me's market.

In fact, in the minds of users, it seems that two brands are a reasonable number. The "positioning" theory suggests that in a mature and stable market, consumers can only accommodate two brands in their minds, such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Boeing and Airbus.

This somewhat explains why latecomers like Douyin and Didi have not conquered the food delivery market. Moreover, although these platforms also have significant traffic, they have not built their own delivery capabilities, initially relying on third-party delivery, burning cash on subsidies without creating differentiation or forming their own competitive moat.

Compared to the aforementioned challengers, JD has richer experience in instant retail and has achieved "minute-level" delivery in first-tier cities, covering over 2,600 counties and districts nationwide.

With this entry, JD has also demonstrated its momentum to change the industry landscape. Right from the start, it offered merchants a "0% commission" incentive (for merchants joining before May 2025), directly challenging Meituan and Ele.me's commission rate model of 6%-8% In addition, JD.com’s entry into the takeaway market strictly selects "quality dine-in restaurants" and attempts to solve the long-standing "ghost kitchen" problem in the takeaway industry through supply chain audits and genuine product assurance systems. This brand chain-focused strategy differentiates itself from Meituan's emphasis on small and medium-sized businesses, targeting high-net-worth user groups.

This strategy not only attracts a large number of merchants to migrate but may also force other platforms to adjust their fee structures. Chain brands may choose to settle on multiple platforms to diversify risks, weakening Meituan and Ele.me's exclusive cooperation advantages.

Moreover, JD.com has already accumulated a considerable number of habitual customers, and its efficient delivery and quality assurance may attract users sensitive to timeliness and food safety, diverting high-end clientele from Meituan and Ele.me; this also means that Meituan needs to further optimize delivery efficiency and technological investment (such as intelligent scheduling algorithms) to cope with competition.

Currently, JD.com has just entered the market. This also means that the various issues experienced by predecessors in the takeaway sector will need to be faced one by one by JD.com. Additionally, the current merchants are mainly chain brands, with fewer small and medium-sized businesses, and the variety is far less than that of Meituan and Ele.me; furthermore, JD.com also needs to cultivate the consumer mindset of "ordering takeaway on JD.com" through subsidies or differentiated services.

With its logistics advantages and differentiated strategies, JD.com is expected to carve out a niche in the takeaway market, but it is unlikely to shake Meituan's leading position in the short term. If it can solve the issues of merchant coverage and user habits, and continuously strengthen the synergy of the instant retail ecosystem, it may form a tripartite competitive landscape of "Meituan leading, JD.com catching up, and Ele.me on the defensive" in the future.

However, the industry that JD.com is entering is indeed not a low-threshold one, and whether it can successfully join the battle remains to be further observed